Harry Potter and the Prancing of Ponies

by The Guy Who Writes

Chapter 3: Resurrection?

A short series of Parseltongue questioning brought Mr. Book up to speed.

"So you know nothing at all."

"Pretty much."

The thestral sighed. "We'll have to explore." His gaze searched the meadow... scanned left to right... seemed to settle squarely on Mr. Silver's invisible form. "Do you intend to remain unfalteringly unseeable for the entire duration of this detour?"

Mr. Silver pulled back the hood of his cloak, revealing his messy, silver mane. "No."

No use hiding if Mr. Book could find him.

There hadn't been much point in the first place, except to make it more annoying to locate him. Area-effect charms are exhausting, according to the books. That effort, plus potential feelings of companionship, plus the false belief that there was still a discordant resonance between their magics, might have been the only things that had stood between himself and a torture/Legilimency session where he spilled all his secrets to Lord Voldemort without any negotiation whatsoever.

But it turned out that it was possible to get Mr. Book to mostly stop killing people all the time. All it had taken was guessing the contents of a prophecy he hadn't heard, making a prediction that the prophecy wasn't as bad as it sounded, and having that prediction confirmed by a letter from Dumbledore... a letter he hadn't been meant to read until Voldemort was already vanquished. If this was the series of circumstances needed to bypass the end of the world's people, to pass through Time's narrow keyhole and save life from inevitable disaster... Mr. Silver shuddered to think what the distant future had in store. Even the near future promised problems, not pleasantness.

He tried to take off his cloak completely, fell over (he was still getting used to hooves and couldn't balance on two limbs to save his life), and received an amused chuckle from the thestral.

"It's harder than it looks," Mr. Silver grumbled as he untangled himself from the cloak. He tried to stand, almost fell again, caught himself, and stood to full height.

He then realized he had nowhere to put his cloak.

Hmm... he was a horse...

"That would be an excellent way to lose an ancient and powerful artifact. "

"Well where am I supposed to put it?" He looked to the cloak slung over his back. "I don't have my pouch."

The thestral looked at him steadily, then made a small gesture with his head. A familiar form floated into Mr. Silver's field of vision – that of a Moke Super Pouch QX31.

"The Mirror brought my inventory as well?"

"Promisse to usse nothing in thiss againsst me or my interesstss and I sshall return it to you."

"I promisse," Mr. Silver said at once.

"Repeat full promisse in Parsseltongue, child."

Mr. Silver did so, and soon found mokeskin attached to his chest, just below his neck and just above his shoulder, like he was wearing it as a medal. He shrugged the Deathly Hallow off his back and onto the ground so he could grab it again. "Did the Mirror bring anything else I should know about?" he asked as the widening lip ate his cloak and burped confirmation the item had been successfully stored.

"Our clothes," said Mr. Book, who was suddenly wearing pony-fitting professor's robes. Mr. Silver's own wardrobe floated forward. "Here."

"Thanks." The robes were slightly easier to wear than the cloak. "Anything else?"

"Everything I had at the time, I have now."

"Does that include your wand?"

Mr. Book's eyes narrowed at Mr. Silver's hooves for a moment, one of which was holding a wand in its too-dexterous grip. The thestral looked to his own right forehoof, flexed it, reached out- and pulled a wand from nowhere.

"I do. Do you sstill have girl-child friend?"

The pegasus felt his back left hoof for confirmation. "Yess." The toe-ring had been reshaped to fit his new form, just like the Invisibility Cloak. "Do you sstill have the Sstone of Permanence?"

"Have sstone."

"Will you keep promisse you made to me if I helped you to retrieve it?"

"Yess. Sstop pesstering. Assked you if you had friend for thiss reasson."

Mr. Silver let a part of himself relax in relief.

It was finally time.

But just as Mr. Book retrieved a chunk of red glass from that same nowhere which had held his wand, Mr. Silver saw a potential problem. "Wait, do you actually know how to use the stone?"

The thestral examined the stone with narrowed eyes. "No, but it should be straightforward. Perenelle learned in a single night, after all."

"We don't know she learned it that fast," Mr. Silver pointed out. "For all we know, it might have taken her entire adult life to figure it out. Or more likely, she watched Baba Yaga use the stone over and over again before stealing it for herself. What I'm saying is there might be a trick to it. It could be this big, involved procedure."

There was a slight pause.

"Then let us hope," said Mr. Book, "it is not."

---

Placing the stone on a transfigured glass ball didn't work, even after waiting for thirty minutes. Holding the stone in one hoof while performing the transfiguration with wand held in the other didn't work. Keeping the stone in contact with the object as it was being transfigured didn't work. None of the incantations Mr. Book tried seemed to work. Trying to impose permanence on non-free transfigurations didn't work either.

Eventually, Mr. Silver suggested that the stone might not work as intended while they were trapped on this side of the Mirror. Mr. Book suspected he was given a false stone even when they were still on the other side. Both admitted that the problem of the stone might take longer than a few hours to solve, if it could be solved at all.

When Mr. Book said that it was time to focus on other things, Mr. Silver tried to protest. Even as the sun reached a high point in the sky, he didn't want to admit other things could take precedent.

Mr. Book pointed out that they had not eaten, that they were ignorant of this new world's potential dangers, and that continuing to test the stone out in the open would not be wise. Doing so in the first place wasn't wise, but Mr. Book hadn't realised sooner on account of his eagerness to use the stone.

"Iss there ssome other ressurrection path we could take?" Mr. Silver asked in Parseltongue, hoping Mr. Book would hiss the answer in turn.

"If we had accesss to other sside of mirror, posssibly. Ass it sstandss, no. Not unlesss new magic exisstss in thiss place to allow for different form of resssurection."

"Great." Mr. Silver sighed. "And since we can't use the stone, I guess permanently transfiguring ourselves back into humans is out too, then."

Mr. Book nodded once. The wand had disappeared from his right hoof, and the stallion finally seemed ready to take his first step. That he hadn't done so already suggested to Mr. Silver that the thestral had been far more exhausted upon waking. Or maybe Mr. Book had simply decided not to dedicate brain activity to a new and difficult task when there had been more pressing matters at hand.

The thestral's first full-height stand took slightly less time than the pegasus's, and soon Mr. Book was learning yet more. He learned to trot, to turn, to gallop, to stop.

Mr. Silver tried some of this himself, falling on his face more than a few times in the process, partially thanks to his robes getting in the way. Mr. Book didn't fall once, though he stumbled plenty and smiled almost as often, every time Mr. Silver faceplanted.

When the thestral seemed satisfied with his maneuverability on the ground, he looked at his bat-like wings, which extended out from recently-added slits in his robes. He closed his eyes in concentration. After locating the proper muscle group in his body, he gave the new limbs test flap. He found himself in the air with a look of surprise on his face. He lowered himself slowly to the ground, this time without aid from his wings.

That was when Mr. Silver realised why things were so easy for Mr. Book. Initially, he assumed a better familiarity with magical equines back home gave Mr. Book an edge. Mr. Book was more knowledgeable on things like centaurs and hippogryphs and... well, thestrals.

But that wasn't it at all.

"Could you cast those broomstick enchantments on my bones?" Mr. Silver asked with a touch of envy in his voice.

"So long as you do not mind the resonance tearing our bodies apart," Mr. Book said flatly.

"We can freely cast magic on each other. I used Innervate to wake you up."

Mr. Book tilted his head.

"Why did you chose to wake me?"

All learning activity stopped.

"I was at your mercy," said the thestral. "Given your morals, or even given mine, the sensible thing to do would have been a memory wipe, followed by transfiguration."

"I almost did exactly that," Mr. Silver admitted.

"Why didn't you?"

The answer to that question was easy to know, but difficult to admit and articulate.

"I... kept thinking about what you told the schoolmaster. About the lecture he gave you. I heard a version of that lecture myself and... well... if he'd said that to me under the circumstances he said it to you... if I had nobody else... I probably would have become a Dark Lord too. There were other factors, the hostages, your promise to help me bring..." Silver glanced at his hoof-ring. "But those weren't decisive in the end. You said it yourself. Sometimes our emotions are more foolish than we'd like to admit. And even when we can admit to the foolishness..."

There was silence in the clearing for a time.

"Direct contact is required for the broomstick enchantment," said Mr. Book, answering the original question as if that brief aside hadn't happened. "My wand would need to touch your bones."

Mr. Silver gulped.

"We do not have the necessary potions on hand to make the procedure completely safe. I could still do it without those potions, but the process would be arduous, tedious, time-consuming, and require your unconsciousness. I could enchant straight rods and attach them to your limbs as I once did for myself, if you wish for something temporary. I cannot guarantee comfort, given our new forms, but I can guarantee function."

"That's... fine, I guess. I just need to learn how to walk and fly on my own, and those'll be good teacher's aides."

"As you wish."

It took little time to set up, and less time to teach himself this new mode of flight. It was intuitive, somehow. When Mr. Silver asked how that could be, Mr. Book explained that he had once tried many rod configurations, remembered the best one, and made some educated guesses on how to apply that orientation to an equine body. Mr. Book warned it wouldn't be this easy if Mr. Silver still wanted the deeper enchantments. Using broomstick rods was easier than using broomstick bones because the positions of the rods could be adjusted, unlike bones. He also warned not to get used to this orientation; it would build bad habits that would come to light when he made the switch to permanent enchantments.

"Then I guess I'll try unaided flight."

Which was an experience.

Compared to flying on a broomstick, or even a set of broomstick rods, flying with his own wings was something else entirely. Realer. More visceral. Like the difference between driving in a car for a mile and running that same mile. And just like running a mile, flying with his wings instead of a broomstick was very stamina intensive. He couldn't last more than a few seconds at a time without resorting to the enchantments, and Mr. Book couldn't last much longer than a minute. Wing muscles, it seemed, had to be built. Technique too.

Mr. Book suggested they propel themselves higher with their enchantments so they could learn how to glide, pointing out that it would probably be the easiest flight technique to learn, and he was right. Gliding was much easier and simpler than wing-powered flight, taking almost no effort at all. And thanks to their high vantage point...

"You see it, too?" asked Mr. Book.

"Yup."

"You no longer need glasses to see detail at a distance?"

"I guess not."

The stallion brought out his wand and, with a sound like a cracking eggshell, disappeared from sight, with only a slight ripple in the air to show where he was. Then that, too, vanished.

"Put on your cloak," said a commanding voice from the empty air. "We're through with baby steps. It is time for reconnaissance."

"On it," said Mr. Silver. He descended, drew out his cloak, began donning it. "By the way," he said as he placed his limbs in the proper places. "I should have asked this earlier, but are you currently... um... in possession of a body that doesn't belong to you?"

"No."

"Truly?"

"Yess."

"Could you sense the owner back in the meadow?"

"No."

"Then where is he?"

The thestral shrugged. "Perhaps the mirror sent him to a different realm of existence, or simply elsewhere, depending on his desires."

---

Elsewhere.

"Free!" said a voice. "Oh, free."

The owner of this voice was drawing many stares. Perhaps because the owner didn't appear to know how to fly, despite his best efforts.

"Mommy, who's that?"

"That is what we call a bird brain, Ginda."

Comments

[lainverse]

> Ginda
Gilda, perhaps? As in he appeared in the air as a griffon in a Griffonstone and that actually was that particular griffoness, but before she met Rainbow. ...I guess I'll know the answer quite soon myself unless he appeared in a different universe.

[keybounce]

Coming back from some 30-or-so chapters later, that last little bit at the end there ...

[The Guy Who Writes]

11339664
Has been there since the beginning, yes. Although in all honesty, the segment of the Celestia/Luna prophecy in chapter 5 was NOT in the original upload.

[Poparakelis]

Who?

[Black--Soul]

Is the former doctor a Griffon by any chance?